Set Photoshop to Thinspiration

[essentialsaltes]

It would be easy to make fun of fatness or cosplay, but I wish to probe the philosophical question:

At what point does a photo of you become not a photo of you?

Here is a retouched photo of me from New Year's.

Comments

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

Certainly art and advertising call for different standards of appropriateness. We accept and expect lies like this

I guess what I was getting at (though I confess I didn't really explain my reaction in my post) was that this picture (and the others linked through the picture) weren't intended as advertising or art. Presumably, these are taken at anime/cosplay cons and the subject is having them altered to flatter their appearance and/or better recreate the original character. And then they can say, "this was me cosplaying X at AnimeFetishCon."
But in what sense is it really that person? Say, take this example. That's not her chin, not her jaw, and... er... those aren't hers either. I'm more than happy to overlook the improvement in skin and shaving a few pounds off to produce a more ideal 'me', but these other changes are so extreme that it seems it's no longer a representation of 'me'. It's the character, and perhaps the enjoyment of the picture is knowing that she's somewhere underneath all that (Look, that's totally my belly button!)